For hundreds of years, brewers have ranked hops based on their quality. This has led to a sense of nobility among a select class of landrace hops brewers prize the most. But are they noble because they’re old and tested, or because they taste and smell so good?
Read MoreWhile I was in Europe, Carlsberg announced it would finally stop using the antiquate Burton Union system used to make Marston’s Pedigree in Burton, England. The news was sad, but it came far later than I ever expected. A eulogy for a technology that was once state of the art.
Read MoreIn the spring, Dan and others from the brewery head off to a forest just west of town. The trees must be a certain height to harvest, and they can’t pick too much of the new growth. “We bring a load of grain bags out with us—it’s beautiful,” he said. “I love it.” It takes more than one visit to collect 200 pounds of tips.
Read MoreFresh hop season is underway, and it has so far proven to be unusual—and enlightening. Here are a few early lessons I’m taking away from the selection I’ve found.
Read MorePerhaps you’ve seen “West Coast pilsner” on a taplist this summer. It is starting to look like a real style, and when made well, a total delight.
Read MoreThere are a lot of new products and agents and ingredients on the market that help amplify or transmute or, in some cases, replace hops. But it turns out that good, old-fashioned hops remain the key ingredient in those IPAs we love.
Read MoreWhat is the state of the art in brewing West Coast IPAs? pFriem took that question as its brief and this week releases a new year-round beer that collects all the tricks, techniques, and ingredients that characterize the style. Here’s what they came up with.
Read MoreSkagit Valley Malting may be gone, but a new start-up from across the mountains gives hope to craft malt.
Read MoreBlind taste a dozen and a half mass market lagers, and you learn something about this much-maligned style. They don’t all taste the same, and in fact represent a surprisingly broad range. We made a few other discoveries along the way.
Read MoreThe discovery of a new Maryland hop led me on a trail of discovery to the office of Dr. Nahla Bassil, at the National Clonal Germplasm Repository. What I discovered was incredibly fascinating, and went far beyond the scope of a single wild hop.
Read MoreAfter an encounter with a single-hop Talus beer, I have a better sense what this newish American hop tastes like, and I am in love. It’s tropical, but less mango and more mangosteen. In this post, I unpack its unusual but somehow familiar flavors.
Read MoreFor such a simple little beer, helles lager is a challenge to make—or at least make very well. Josh pFriem has been honing his example for decades, and it gets its big debut this month as the latest six-pack offering from pFriem.
Read MoreSome clever breweries look back when they’re seeking to move forward, recognizing that history may contain a hidden gem that, dusted off and repurposed, might delight a modern audience. Here’s a technique that’s ripe for experimentation.
Read MoreHistorically, hops have been divided by category—”bitter” versus “aroma” was the classic dichotomy. Because of the massive changes in beer and hop breeding, German researchers are suggesting expanding that group to four categories. But are categories really necessary?
Read MoreThe Siebel Institute has just released a recipe celebrating their 150th anniversary that any brewer can make—including homebrewers. It looks like a fun beer.
Read MoreNearly all the beer in the world is made in a professional brewery, or in small batches for home use. Once, brewing on a scale for non-commercial community consumption was much more common, and a few places still practice it.
Read MoreOver the weekend, I attended the farmhouse ale festival in Norway. In this post, I offer a visual presentation of Stig Seljeset’s process, from the wood-fired juniper infusion through pitching his own strain of kveik yeast.
Read MoreAfter revolutions in hop breeding and product development and micromalting, yeast is getting its moment in the sun. A proliferating number of yeast labs offer organic and genetically-modified strains that do things like ferment without diacetyl or finish in half the time.
Read MoreTrying to describe hop aromas, dizzying in their diversity, has long bedeviled writers and brewers. Global hops company BarthHaas has been developing a tool that may finally help solve the problem.
Read MoreMany American breweries make sixty beers a year. Rochefort hasn’t offered a single new release in sixty years. Because monks don’t do anything without considering the long view, the abbey also built a new brewery to handle the increased production.
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